1 Samuel 14:24-52 The False Religion of Self-Denial

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsex preaches from his series in First Samuel, Timely Prophet, Tragic King. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning, everybody.

As Dave said, I'm Don Filsex, I'm the lead pastor here. And I wanna welcome you to this community of faith gathering this morning. That really is what we are, is we're a community of faith. We are a group of people who woke up in different places this morning and have gathered together to worship God in community because we need relationships, we need each other.

And I wanna give a special welcome to those of you that are checking things out. Maybe you're here for the first time. I know it takes a bit of courage to come out and check something out for the first time.

And I would encourage you, I just recently heard somebody mention this at a conference that I attended, to give you guys the three-try challenge. The three-try challenge just means give us three tries.

We don't always get things right. The first week that you visit, you might go, whoa, that was weird. Sometimes we all think that was weird. So give us a couple of chances to win you over and to ultimately get an opportunity to worship together with us a couple of times.

It's our goal over our time together, when we gather together, to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service. And here at Recast, we believe that growing in faith comes about fundamentally by taking in God's word.

That's the starting point of growing in faith, is taking in his word and then secondly, believing that it is true. And in believing that it is true, then we go out and we live according to it. So it's that kind of order that we believe is fundamental to what it means to grow in faith, that we must have the way that God has revealed himself to us in his word in order to genuinely grow in our faith.

This morning, we're gonna be looking at a little bit of a bizarre text. It seems kind of strange at face value. There's some strange and bizarre decisions that are made within the text itself. We're looking at the Old Testament.

We're gonna see some rash or some foolish vows or oaths that are taken and they're not kept. A king that curses himself in this text and a near defeat plucked from the jaws of victory. So we're gonna see the Israelites being victorious on the field of battle, but they nearly are able to turn it into a defeat.

It's just a close call. The tragic king, King Saul, is gonna continue his downward spiral as his kingship slips through his fingers in our text, and we're gonna see that over the course of time, just the tragedy and the downward spiral of this individual named King Saul in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel.

And as we read this text at face value, and we're gonna read it here in a moment together, it's gonna look like Saul is punished or is at least on the way out because of poor military strategy, as if God is upset because he made a poor decision might be at face value what you get when you read this text.

But there's always something more going on. Have you noticed that there's always something going on deeper than that in Scripture? Often it's not just the face value that you get, but you have to think about it.

You have to wrestle with it. God's Word is beautiful that way. There's times where you read a passage of Scripture and it's like you can get something at a very surface-y level.

Have you ever had that happen?

And it's okay, that's good. But then all of a sudden something, some circumstances in your life or some situations, just take it a step deeper and you're like, whoa, I've read this text before, but all of a sudden it comes alive to you in a new way.

And there's a depth to this text that we're gonna be looking at here. Saul has set up a pattern in his life of using religion to try to get God to serve him. And we don't get that without a little bit deeper study, but that's been a pattern that we've seen over the course of his life, and we're gonna see that continue on forward.

He has this idea that God should serve him, and he's looking for what is the key to have that happen. But he's found out over the course of the last few chapters that God is less than compliant. Apparently the Almighty, I mean, how dare he, but he happens to have a will of his own, and he exerts his own will, and he is not that eager to just line himself up with other people's plans and thoughts.

And our tragic king continues to look for the key to bending God to his will. And I believe that if we're all honest, that that's something that everybody who's sitting here this morning can relate to.

I think that you have at times, I know I have at times, sought to get God to line up with my plans, my desires, my agenda, my way. And I think that you can probably think about how this message interfaces with your life in the ways that you have done that as well, but it really is the heart of false religion.

That really at the end of the day is the core nugget, the kernel, the central core of false religion. If we're honest, false gospels and false religions are about getting a God to serve us. Finding a God we can, and maybe it even involves some sacrifice.

Have you noticed that many false religions involve a high level of sacrifice, why? Well, the idea, the notion is that if we sacrifice enough, we can turn the God into our slave. We can force his compliance with us by putting ourselves down or by sacrificing a lot.

And so we seek to find a God we can sacrifice to so that we can get health, so that we can get wealth, or the notion that you see on TV, just send in your seed money and then watch the blessings flow.

Just send in that $1 ,000 and the blessings are gonna flow. Just sacrifice till it hurts, and then God's going to fill in the blank. Saul in our text turns to the age-old attempt to win God's heart through radical self-denial, and not only his own self-denial, the self-denial of his troops as well.

But self-denial, despite its popularity among religious folks, is really nothing more than another aspect of false religion. So if you're not already there, I want you to open your Bibles to 1 Samuel chapter 14, and we're gonna be looking at the second half of that chapter.

We looked at the first half last week, and you can go back and listen to that podcast. It's available online. But yes, starting in chapter 24, and we're gonna read through the end of the chapter, 1 Samuel 14.

If you don't have a Bible or means to navigate to the Bible, just grab the Bible that's under the seat in front of you and then turn to page 135. It's very helpful for you to be able to follow along as we're gonna be reading a good-sized chunk of Scripture together.

And remember, recast, that this is God's word to us. This is what he desires for us to hear, and I think it's such a beautiful thing when we can gather together as God's people and hear from him together.

He's gonna speak to us as a congregation. So listen in. And the men of Israel had been hard-pressed that day. So Saul had laid an oath on the people, saying, cursed be the man who eats food until it is evening, and I am avenged on my enemies.

So none of the people had tasted food. Now when all the people came to the forest, behold, there was honey on the ground, and when the people entered the forest, behold, the honey was dropping, but no one put his hand to his mouth,.

For the people feared the oath.

But Jonathan had not heard. His father charged the people with the oath, so he put out the tip of his staff that was in his hand, dipped it in the honeycomb, put his hand to his mouth, and his eyes became bright.

Then one of the people said, your father strictly charged the people with an oath, saying, cursed be the man who eats food this day. And the people were faint. Then Jonathan said, my father has troubled the land.

See how my eyes have become bright because I tasted a little of this honey? How much better if the people had eaten freely today of the spoils of their enemies that they found, for now the defeat among the Philistines has not been great.

They struck down the Philistines that day from Michmash to Eijalon, and the people were very faint. The people pounced on the spoil, and took sheep and oxen and calves and slaughtered them on the ground, and the people ate them with the blood.

Then they told Saul, behold, the people are sinning against the Lord by eating with the blood. And he said, you have dealt treacherously. Roll a stone to me here. And Saul said, disperse yourselves among the people and say to them, let every man bring his ox and his sheep and slaughter them here and eat, and do not sin against the Lord by eating with the blood.

So every one of the people brought an ox with him that night and they slaughtered them there. And Saul built an altar to the Lord. It was the first altar that he had built to the Lord. Then Saul said, let us go down after the Philistines by night and plunder them until the morning light.

Let us not leave a man of them. And they said, do whatever seems good to you. But the priest said, let us draw near to God here. And Saul inquired of God, shall I go down to the Philistines? Will you give them into the hand of Israel?

But he did not answer him that day. And Saul said, come here, all you leaders of the people, and know and see how this sin has arisen today. For as the Lord lives who saves Israel, though it be in Jonathan my son, he shall surely die.

But there was not a man among all the people who answered him. Then he said to all Israel, you shall be on one side and I and Jonathan my son will be on the other side. And the people said to Saul, do what seems good to you.

Therefore Saul said, O God of Israel, why have you not answered your servant this day? If this guilt is in me or in Jonathan my son, O Lord, God of Israel, give Urim. And if this guilt is in your people, Israel, give Thummim.

And Jonathan and Saul were taken, but the people escaped. Then Saul said, cast the lot between me and my son, Jonathan, and Jonathan was taken. Then Saul said to Jonathan, tell me what you have done. And Jonathan told him, I tasted a little honey with the tip of the staff that was in my hand.

Here I am, I will die. And Saul said, God do so to me and more also, you shall surely die, Jonathan. Then the people said to Saul, shall Jonathan die, who has worked this great salvation in Israel? Far from it, as the Lord lives, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground, for he has worked with God this day.

So the people ransomed Jonathan so that he did not die. Then Saul went up from pursuing the Philistines and the Philistines went to their own place. When Saul had taken the kingship over Israel, he fought against all the enemies on every side, against Moab, against the Ammonites, against Edom, against the kings of Zobah, and against the Philistines.

Wherever he turned, he routed them and he did valiantly and struck the Amalekites and delivered Israel out of the hands of those who plundered them. Now the sons of Saul were Jonathan, Ishvi, and Malkishua.

And the names of his daughters were these. The name of the firstborn was Merab and the name of the younger was Michal. And the name of Saul's wife was Ahanoam and the daughter of Ahamez. And the name of the commander of his army was Abner, the son of Ner, Saul's uncle.

Kish was the father of Saul and Ner, the father of Abner, was the son of Abiel. There was hard fighting against the Philistines all the days of Saul and when Saul saw any strong man or any valiant man, he attached him to himself.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for your word. Your word is true. It is what we need to know you, to know you rightly and correctly. And Father, I confess that there have been times in my life where I have thought poorly of you.

To be quite honest, routinely my thoughts are not as high and as exalted as they should be about you. So Father, I pray that you would correct where we have thought about you in error. Father, fundamentally we need right belief that leads to right action.

And so Father, I pray that you would deal with us first and foremost in the realm of our belief that we might trust in you accurately and based on what is true and then live our lives based on that trust.

Father, each one of us needs a transformation of moving away from darkness to light, moving away from falsehood to truth. And I pray that you would work that in our midst. We live in a chaotic world. There's so many things going on and swirling around us.

There's so much division that we see in the news and in the media. And Father, rather than get up here and talk about all of those things, rather than deal with the specific issues, I believe what we need is to hear from you.

I believe what we need is to draw close to you. And I believe what our society and our culture needs is a people who are being reborn and rebuilt and strengthened and walking in faith and trust and hope.

Father, I pray that we would be people of joy and hope and a people who bring salvation to the world around us, salt and light, in a tasteless and dark world. And Father, I pray that because we are redeemed, because we are infused with joy, because our hope is secure in Christ, then that we would lift our voices before you from that place.

Not from a place of, oh, it's song time, so we're gonna sing some songs. Not even from a place of, I need my worship fix this week. But from a place of recognizing how high and exalted and majestic you truly are, how much you have loved us, how much you have sacrificed for us, that we might walk in joy and hope today.

In Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for that, Rob.

I appreciate that. Thanks to Dave and the band for leading us. I'm grateful for what they do every week. And I encourage you to get comfortable. If you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, well, supply is less back there.

And then keep your Bibles open to 1 Samuel chapter 14 verses 24 through 52. That's our text. It's good for you to have that open so that you can see as I reference that text and we walk through it. And I'm gonna start off just by referencing the very end of the message last week to catch us up and remind us there's a bit of a contrast between two verses and you need to remember that the verses were not in the original.

So the chapter breaks, the verse breaks are not in that original. And so you really see a contrast between the way that the text ended last week and the start of this. So you go back to verse 23 of chapter 14.

And at the very end of that text, it declared that the Lord saved Israel that day. The Lord saved Israel that day. How many of you think that sounds celebratory? Does that sound like something that's worth like joyous, it's a joyous occasion.

On that day, the Lord brought salvation. And then we come to verse 25 or 24. And we're told that the military was hard pressed that day. We see God working a victory last week through Jonathan. And then we see this week that that victory came with significant pressure.

And if you, again, sometimes it's helpful to get the flow of these. And if you miss a week, these are all recorded and they're available on the website. Or you can go to the, if you have an Apple device, you can go to podcasts and type in recast and you can subscribe there or just check out one at a time and see how God worked through Jonathan last week.

But in verse 24, we're told explicitly that they were hard pressed and specifically because of a poor leadership, poor military decision on the part of their king. So how many of you ever had a boss or somebody over you that you thought made a pretty poor decision?

Okay, I think a couple of us. And I think probably most of us. Somebody who's over you, maybe you didn't even agree with something that your parents did. We're gonna see that in the text as well. But things sometimes don't necessarily work out the way that even for us that we thought they were going to.

Apparently in our text, he issued an oath of a curse to all of his troops that they were not to eat food until evening when Saul would be avenged on his enemies. He said, you're just not gonna eat any food today until victory is ours.

Almost kind of a way of self-sacrifice, if you will. So the troops are fighting. They're famished and they're weary. The word famished appears in our text. The word faint appears in our text. There are a couple of different reasons why Saul might have placed this added burden on the troops.

I don't know if you've thought about this. The text is not explicit, but I think it begins to kind of tease it out over the next couple of chapters, explaining why he might make a decision like this. One possibility is that he heard from God, right?

That God told him to have his troops fast and so he's made that decision. Another option would be that maybe he wanted to motivate them out of fear or desperation. Like, how many of you know that kind of the idea of fight hungry, play hungry, you know?

Like, you wanna win it, you gotta, but literally hungry, you know? So he's got this idea that like, fight for your meal, okay? So you've got a lot on the line here and there's a lot of desperation when you're hungry.

And so maybe that's kind of, he wants them to be hangry as they're fighting. So that's possible. And the third possibility that I see in here, you might come up with some others, but I think that he had a sense that what God desired most, what God desires most from a person, what God desires most from a leader, what God desires most from people is sacrifice.

That's what God wants, that's the way he rolls. And therefore, he forced his troops, all of them, to sacrifice in order to get God's attention, in order to get God's favor. Now, there's no indication in this text that Saul made his army fast because God told him so.

There's nothing, no indication before this, after this, during this text, that that's the case. So I dismiss that first option. The second option is probably just a commonsensical part of the motivation, like that might just be at least a fraction of the motive is like having them fight hungry, having them fight with something, some sense of desire.

But really, he makes a rash vow and lays a heavy burden on his troops to try to motivate them. But the last reason is the one that comes to the forefront. The next chapter, we're gonna see an indication of this.

A theme emerges as the prophet Samuel, I'm gonna steal a little of my thunder from next week, but the prophet Samuel's gonna come to Saul and make this declaration about our God that comes to bear on our text today.

He desires, God desires obedience more than sacrifice. He wants obedience more than sacrifice. Think about this with me for a moment as we get our minds in gear for what this text is teaching us about our God.

We are basically doing theology when we talk about, when we encounter scripture, we're forming our thoughts about who he is. And we really can't do that without some information about how he's revealed himself, and that's what this story is about.

It's not just some history lesson. It's not just something that was recorded for us about ancient history. We can learn about the kings of Israel, and we can learn about ancient military battles.

And stuff like that,.

But we're actually looking at who is God. And I wanna point out just a statement about God that might actually be counter to some of our culture, maybe even to some of the thoughts you felt. God is not a cosmic killjoy.

God is not a cosmic killjoy. He is not looking to bleed you dry. He is not looking for you to sacrifice all the good things that he has given to you. He is not looking to starve you into submission. He is not pleased by human misery.

Contrary to what many in our culture believe is true of God, that is not true of our God. At face value, just as you read the text, as we walk through it, it looks like Saul is merely making a poor leadership decision, as if he could have chosen to let them eat, he chose not to let them eat, and that's it, right?

Just a bad, bad decision, and that's it. How many of you, by the way, think that it's a bad decision for him to demand his army to fast while they're expending calories chasing the Philistines across this rugged terrain?

Do you think that's a poor, I mean, it is. It is, at face value, a poor military decision, and that's what's going on here. There is more, of course, though, behind the surface. It's more than just poor military strategy in our text this morning.

It is a wrong attitude about the Almighty God. It is, that's what's going on here, a wrong attitude about God himself. It is his wrong thinking that betrays his lack of a true heart relationship pursuing after God.

That's why God's gonna raise up David, a man who pursues God, to replace him. Spoiler alert, I should have said that in advance. Now you're like, oh, great, here we go. He wants to, Saul wants to use God to get the victory that he craves.

He wants victory, and he's gonna, God is a, to Saul, you can think of it this way. Saul has a bunch of tools on his tool belt of how to obtain victory, and he's just gonna pull out God's attention card right now.

God is just one tool in an arsenal of things that he could do to defeat the Philistines, and he's gonna make sure he tries to cover his bases, so he's gonna try to fast a little bit, and see if maybe that'll get God's attention and get him to come to the battle on behalf of the Israelites.

He's desperately trying to get God to serve him. And so, none of his troops taste food, according to the text, that day. Well, none of them except for one, and we're gonna get there here in a minute. But the Lord God, who gives good gifts to his children, had pledged that the land that was going to be given to his people was a land flowing with milk and honey, a land flowing with milk and honey.

And many of us know that from Sunday school, from the Old Testament, from the promises given in Exodus about the land that he was giving to them as they're coming out of Egypt, and he says it's gonna be a land flowing with milk and honey, it's gonna have abundance.

And in verse 25, we see that this was literally true. Literally true, there's literally honey dripping off the branches in this forest in the middle of Israel. And so the army passes all of this, and of course, have you ever seen food when you're hungry?

Anybody ever just, you kind of start to salivate, you got that Pavlov's dogs thing going on, and you're just like, I gotta have some food, right? I think we've all been there, you can come up with your own story, I'll share a story.

When I was in seminary, I went to visit one of my best friends, Ben Glupker, up in Virginia. He's now a pastor on the other side of the state. But he was attending Liberty University at the time, and he and I went together for a day hike up this area called the Peaks of Otter.

It's kind of a hill country district in Virginia, a little bit of the foothills. And we went up this one peak, the Peak of Otter, and it was one of those trails or mountains that you just kind of like think that just around the next bend is the summit, right?

Have you ever done that, like a day hike, and it's just kind of like, I think we're almost there, and you round the bend, and it's like, oh, there's a couple more switchbacks, and then we'll be there, and an hour turned into a couple of hours, and we really hadn't had lunch, we didn't pack any trail mix, nothing to eat, and we were famished by the time we got to the top, and we still gotta get back down to his car.

So we make it back down to his car, you know, kind of just crawling, and just leave me behind, bro, like I'm not gonna, you know, go, save yourself, and you know, people are walking past us like, what?

Like, what is going on, and it's like, no, no, no, don't leave me. So we get in the car, and we round the bend, and it's, you know, going down through this valley, getting back to his apartment, and there is a site for sore eyes.

There's this KFC, KFC. And it had the most glorious of words, in a, like a neon sign in the front window. Do you know what that word was?

Buffet. Buffet.

We damaged that buffet. I mean, we crushed it. We got our money's worth on that one. I'm pretty confident of that. So, here in our text, you know, they are, they're hungry, like that kind of hunger. Have you ever experienced that?

I mean, I think you've experienced hunger, and I mean, certainly not, you know, I mean, we can talk about starvation in the world, and obviously, but a genuine, like, like visceral, like your muscles need nourishment.

Your body needs nourishment, and you know it. It's just craving calories. The text let us know that the army is famished. They are faint. A technical word that means about to drop. It's literally like life or death going on here.

They were near collapse.

But even as they passed the honey on the ground, which might as well have been a KFC buffet, they refrain from touching it. They refrain out of a respectful fear of their king and the oath that he has laid on them.

But remember that Jonathan wasn't there when Saul issued this command at the start of the battle. How do we know that? Well, the text tells us, but it also makes sense of what we read last week. Remember that Jonathan was already fighting the Philistines before Saul ever even knew that he was going to battle that day.

Jonathan's the one who initiated the battle, and then Saul and the troops joined him later. And so from this perspective, you have to recognize Jonathan has not been issued an oath. Jonathan does not know or understand that this has been a weight that's placed on his shoulders.

And therefore, you must understand, fundamental to this text, that Jonathan did not sin. He didn't willfully disobey the king's command. He just didn't even know about it at all. So he took the tip of his staff and dipped it in the honeycomb and raised it to his mouth and ate, and he received some of the calories that his body needed.

And it says it brightened his eyes. He regained some strength. And it was only after he's eaten that he's informed by some of the troops.

That are there marching with him.

That his father had placed the entire army under this foolish oath. Well, Jonathan is upset at his father reasonably for issuing this extra burden, and he even accuses him of troubling the land, of making this more difficult for Israel.

His reasoning is that victory would have been greater had the troops been allowed a lunch break. But now with this oath, the victory was not as great as it could have been, as it should have been. They may well have been able to completely decimate the Philistines in this encounter, but Saul takes this foolish oath, and therefore, the victory is not as great as it could have been, says Jonathan.

Now, the reality is anybody can make a poor decision. Anybody wanna raise their hand on that?

You ever make a couple poor decisions?

Who among us hasn't bought at a time you should have sold? You know, hindsight's 20 -20, right? Why did I buy then? I should have sold. Who hasn't scolded the wrong child before getting all the information?

And you feel terrible about it. All of us have done that, right, at some point. Who has never burned a batch of cookies or sent an email that you should have just deleted? Anybody ever done that? Am I the only one?

You send it, and then it's like, oh, why did I send that? Come on. Come back, come back. How do we get this back?

Oh, it's gone.

Yeah, and the follow-up email. Don't read that one. Just let that one go. That never works, never works. But what Saul has done here is not merely the mistake of a good leader who has made a mistake.

He's just, you know, did one bad thing. This is a troublesome, foolish, rash, and most importantly, theologically misguided attempt to garner the favor of Yahweh using the methods of the pagan nations.

That's exactly what he's trying to do. He's trying to worship God like the nations would worship an idol. Get God's attention. Harm yourself to get God's attention. Fast so that God will be on your side.

Give and give and give.

Why do you think the prophets of Baal would take out knives and cut themselves in the worship of, to try to harm themselves, to try to make it hurt, because God, of course, wants you to suffer for him.

That's the nation's idea. Saul has treated the Almighty like the little G gods of the nations who they thought could be manipulated and forced to fight on behalf of the people. So the battle that day raged, it says in the text.

The battle raged from Michmash to Eidolon. This is about a 15 to 20-mile swath of battle. It's a rocky and rugged terrain. The troops were faint, and the Philistines are moving towards the west to try to get back to their fortified cities near the coast.

And the Israelites are famished and faint.

And trying to give chase.

So when evening came, the people, it says in the text, pounced on the spoils. So they had taken spoils. Of course, an army that was the size of the Philistine army that came out would have had to have their own food supply there with them.

So they had their own sheep and their own oxen and all that. And of course, they're leaving them behind as they're trying to escape. And so Israel's collecting these as they go, but they're not eating until the evening.

So now evening arrives, and they pounced on them. And the word pounce there is in the Hebrew, and it is the notion of kind of just like ravenously falling on something.

They are starving.

So they slaughter and butcher the sheep and the oxen on the ground. So they were supposed to, according to the Old Testament law, sacrifice, to slaughter it on a rock and allow the blood to drain. They begin to eat it.

The implications, by the way, is that they're eating it raw. Okay, so you gotta have that picture in your mind. What does it mean to eat it with the blood in it? They're not only not draining it, but the implication is that they are just eating the meat.

They are starving, and they are just going to town. And so they didn't drain it. They pounced on it like Ben and I pounced on that buffet. Okay, I think it could be fair to say we pounced on the buffet.

We might even have thrown some elbows to try to get in there. And I mean, I think it's fortunate for Ben and I that the chicken was already cooked in a delicious secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices. But it wasn't for the Israelites here, and so because of that, they just jumped in there.

And so the decision of Saul, I want you to see this. The foolish decision of Saul has led the people toward sin. It's led his people toward sin. Now, they are responsible. Every human is responsible for their own actions.

Do you know that? Saul did not cause the people to sin, but he led them toward it. He brought them closer to it, and they are nearing collapse. They are starving. So Saul commands them to roll over a large stone.

He sets up a makeshift mess hall right there, complete with a stone to correctly butcher the animals, and builds an altar for making offerings and roasting the meat. And interestingly, in verse 35, as the decline of Saul is well underway, we're seeing and observing the imploding of a king, we find this ironic comment in verse 35 that this is the first altar that Saul has ever built.

Now, that would be pretty common for an Israelite leader to build altars. That was a pretty common thing. Not necessarily for them to be the one to make the sacrifices, but for them to build an altar, you go back through the Old Testament and read about the number of altars that Isaac or Jacob or Abraham built.

And then you come here to this text, and he's well on the way into the decline, and he's just now building an altar. So they eat their fill and are energized by the food, and Saul wants to make up for lost time and pursue the Philistines by night.

He's kind of like, he's basically thwarted them, and now he's like, well, let's just keep going through the night. I mean, it's kind of like a poor decision on first shift, you're working in the factory, and a poor decision based on your foreman causes you to be unproductive, and then he says, well, let's work all day tomorrow too.

Do you get, I mean, how many of you would be signing up for that? You'd be like super, super happy about that. Or first shift mistake, so now you're working third too,.